Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PETTERSEN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, more than 20 percent of Americans have owned or traded cryptocurrency.

Despite this, the U.S. still lacks a clear regulatory structure for digital assets which is hurting American competitiveness and incentivizing some companies, unfortunately, to move overseas.

While there may be disagreement about how to best establish the appropriate market regulatory structure, there is broad bipartisan agreement for preventing criminals from using cryptocurrencies for illicit purposes, such as money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctioned evasion.

My amendment would provide clarity and conformity to how the Bank Secrecy Act and regulations safeguarding our financial system from criminals are applied to digital assets.

The base bill already calls for the Bank Secrecy Act to apply to digital assets; however, by amending the BSA directly and explicitly expanding the definition of financial institution in the BSA to cover digital asset entities, we are providing certainty to the regulators and the Department of Treasury in their authorities to protect our financial system.

Additionally, the amendment would also require a study to assess the risk posed by centralized intermediaries based in jurisdictions that lack robust anti-money laundering enforcement.

While in most cases, American digital asset companies are already complying with the applicable requirements under the Bank Secrecy Act, we also have to be thinking about the threat of foreign companies with U.S. touchpoints that are not complying with equivalent controls or reporting standards.

I thank Chairman McHenry and Representative Hill for working with me on this issue, and their commitment to strengthening the anti-money laundering provisions in this bill.

This amendment, combined with the underlying bill, will help provide more oversight into the digital asset market and support regulators' work to protect consumers and investors. While there is more work to be done to ensure the integrity of our digital assets market, this amendment is an important step forward and I urge my colleagues to support the adoption of the amendment and the underlying bill.

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Ms. PETTERSEN. Mr. Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I, again, thank the chairman from North Carolina for working with me and others to bring a bipartisan bill with broad support to the House. This has been years in the making, and I congratulate him for getting it to this point. I appreciate his willingness to work with me. I also thank my team for helping me address an issue that I had concerns about.

Mr. Chair, I ask for the support of my colleagues, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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